arup was "helped down," it seemed,--really up, rather,--into
a new world. Things had begun all over again. It was worth while to
get well, and take courage. Those brasses shone in her face like
morning suns.

"Well, I do declare to Man, Miss Grapp!" she exclaimed; and breath
and expression failed together, and that was all she could say.

Up-stairs, Luclarion swept and rummaged. She found the sheet and
towel drawers, and made everything white and clean. She laid fresh
napkins over the table and bureau tops, and set the little
things--boxes, books, what not,--daintily about on them. She put a
clean spread on the bed, and gathered up things for the wash she
meant to have, with a recklessness that Mrs. Scarup herself would
never have dared to use, in view of any "help" she ever expected to
do it.

And then, with Pinkie to lend feeble assistance, Luclarion turned to
in the kitchen.

It was a "clear treat," she told Mrs. Ripwinkley afterward. "Things
had got to that state of mussiness, that you just began at one end
and worked through to the other, and every inch looked new made over
after you as you went along."

She put the children out into the yard on the planks, and gave them
tin pans and clothes-pins to keep house with, and gingerbread for
their dinner. She and Pinkie had cups of tea, and Mrs. Scarup had
her gruel, and went up to bed again; and that was another new
experience, and a third stage in her treatment and recovery.

When it came to the cellar, Luclarion got the chore-man in; and when
all was done, she looked round on the renovated home, and said
within herself, "If Scarup, now, will only break his neck, or get
something to do, and stay away with his pipes and his boots and his
contraptions!"

And Scarup did. He found a chance in some freight-house, and wrote
that he had made up his mind to stay out there all winter; and Mrs.
Scarup made little excursions about the house with her returning
strength, and every journey was a pleasure-trip, and the only misery
was that at the end of the fortnight Miss Grapp was going away, and
then she should be "all back in the swamp again."

"No, you won't," said Luclarion; "Pinkie's waked up, and she's going
to take pride, and pick up after the children. She can do that, now;
but she couldn't shoulder everything. And you'll have somebody in
the kitchen. See if you don't. I've 'most a mind to say I'll stay
till you do."

Luclarion's faith was strong; she knew, she